distance kayaked: 260+ miles
total confirmed miles to date: 1409

Where to start... They call it the “World's Toughest Canoe Race”, and I'm certainly not going to disagree. I spent months researching the San Marcos and Guadalupe Rivers. I watched videos, clips, read posts and blogs, and talked to racers, but I still wasn't “ready” when I got there. It's a situation where you have to make do with what you have and just hope for the best. Approximately 100 teams entered. I don't have the exact numbers (since the webmaster is lazy and hasn't posted the official results), but about a quarter of all teams didn't make it to the finish. I myself barely made it within the 100 hour time limit.





The place was a madhouse before the start of the race (and also during check-in the day before). As you can see, boats varied considerably in style and size. The huge 6-man “Texas” style boats were the stars of the show, but solo and tandem boats were the most common. Serious racers spend thousands of dollars on boats specialized for the TWS. The rest of us race in whatever we have. (One solo paddler gave 110% effort in a whitewater kayak but eventually had to tap out.) You can barely see my boat WAY in the back on the right side.



Here's me and my mom, my “team captain”. She's the reason I survived this race. The TWS has crazy-strict rules where only the team captain can give you water. You aren't to receive help from ANYONE else, and you have to take everything besides water with you from the start. i.e. You can't pick up food along the way. And if you lose something essential, consider yourself disqualified.

During her own research, she discovered that TCs find it easier to flag down their teams when they wear something distinctive. Hence the ridiculous red hat, always a welcome sight.



a few minutes before the start of the race.
I have to tell you something about this kayak... It weighs a ton. Completely empty, it weighs almost 60 pounds. (Most racers' boats weigh closer to 30.) With 5 days worth of food plus required gear, repair/emergency equipment, and several liters of water, I could barely lift it off the ground. (I ended up taking almost double the food I needed, but never mind that...) It was by far the heaviest solo kayak in the race.
Also note: you can see my primary lighting system, a Maglite, mounted on the bow. Other teams spent hundreds of dollars on their lighting systems; I wish I had.



The race begins with a mad dash to a small dam at mile 0.25. It sounds odd, starting an ultramarathon with a sprint, but boats have a limited number of options for crossing the dam, and if you are unfortunate and choose a popular crossing point, you get to wait in line while those who arrived before you stumble across.
My starting position was way at the back on river-right, behind about 16 rows of boats. (I made this request so I wouldn't get run over by the 6-man boat that would have otherwise been directly behind me.) I didn't lose much time at the dam; I only had to wait for 2 other boats to cross before me.



This is Rio Vista Dam at mile 0.75 – THE place for spectators. The vast majority of teams use light boats that can't take much abuse and aren't made for big water. As such, they portage over the rock face on the right to avoid the first drop (you can see a boat headed that way). Others attempt to run it, get swamped, and flip immediately below. I was hoping to give it a trial run or two the previous day but ran out of time. Even so, I'd been looking forward to this for months. You can see me in this picture lining up for my first ever attempt at Rio Vista Dam.




What a rush!


nearing the second drop.


I came in too far to the right and got stuck on this rock shelf for a moment. I was about to feel really stupid, having to get out after making it down the only drop that should have been a problem, but thankfully the force of the river pushed me over the ledge after a few seconds.






the third and final drop.



Since I wasn't the one taking the pictures (obviously), I have to explain a lot of things that took place where no pictures were taken.

One thing I realized right away - even though I was in a sea kayak without a rudder, I could outmaneuver most other boats in this swift current. I was cutting corners and zipping past solo, tandem, and 4-man boats. This was thanks to my spray skirt, which despite the heat, I used for the entire race. It allowed me to place my kayak on edge and execute sharp turns other boats only wished they could pull off. But any gains I might have made on the river were lost during the portages.

Cummings Dam at mile 5 almost sent me home. The vast majority of teams lower their boats down the face of the dam. [ see video ] Alternatively, there's a narrow-ass ledge you can try to carry your boat along and around (see background in video). Anyway, I tried the ledge first, but as the boat was too heavy to carry and I didn't have anyone steadying the back end, it kept trying to fall off. So I went back to the main wall, secured my 300lb test rope to my tow line, and started to tilt it over the edge. Well son of a bitch, before I had even started to lower it (was still tilting), my tow line snapped, and the overweight kayak nose-dived 15 feet into the gravel below. It didn't even fall along one of the buttresses; it went straight down. I was sure it had been destroyed, but no; it survived. No holes. Nothing. (I'm now convinced that the bulkhead seals were compromised as a result, but structurally, it's as if nothing had happened. I still need to re-silicone the thing.)


Cottonseed Rapids, approximately mile 7.

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Martindale Dam at mile 11. not a very long portage, but a pain-in-the-ass nonetheless.


Since my tow-line snapped, I had to take this alternate route.




I believe this was taken from FM1979 at mile 12. The bridge sits at the start of a blind sweeping S-turn. If you go in too far to the right, you hit a submerged rock/block (see a few pictures down). If you go too far to the left, you get smashed into the trees at the far end of the first turn (see below).





the drop.




notice the block (lower middle) and the stuck canoeists (background)







The first 16 miles of the TWS was the best kayaking trip I had ever taken.

The first checkpoint is at mile 17 – Staples Dam. Here, I attempted to use the kayak's rear grip to lower it down a set of metal stairs. The grip slipped out of my hands, and my kayak slid down the stairs, shot across the water, and nailed some guy in the shoulder. Good times.

Somewhere around mile 30, my life jacket got snagged by a sweeper and stopped me dead in my tracks. As I tried to pull the straps off the tree limb, the cockpit slowly flooded, and when I tried to hop out to reduce the strain on the straps, the rear bulkhead flooded too. All of my food washed out and started floating down the river. A couple of solo paddlers who'd also had issues at the same sweeper jumped into the river and helped catch the food bags floating by, tossing them onto shore for me. Technically this is grounds for disqualification (NO HELPING OTHER RACERZ!!1), but if it weren't for them, I'd have been finished before I even started, right? I'm not the only one who received help on the river, but this sort of thing, you have to keep to yourself. Before you start the race, you read the rules and say to yourself “no problem, I won't need any help”, then you get your ass handed to you, and it's a choice of being a team player or not finishing. One of the good Samaritans was the whitewater kayaker; it's a shame he didn't finish.

If I haven't mentioned how much I hated portaging... The 3rd checkpoint was at Luling Dam, mile 46, where you have to lower your boat 15 vertical feet down a steep boulder-strewn hill. Of course, the rear grip slipped out of my hands, the kayak shot down the hill, and it rocketed across to the far side of a giant eddy created by the dam. I had to swim out to retrieve my boat. A lot of people took pictures, I guess they were expecting me to do some fancy self-rescue, hop in, and continue; but no, I had to drag it back to shore so I could get in.




There's me pushing my paddle along like an asshole. I couldn't leave it on shore in case the boat escaped the eddy and started floating downriver without me.





There aren't too many pictures after this point.

It started to get dark about an hour after I left Luling Dam, and I found that my light system is far from adequate in a swift downriver environment. I caught up with a C2 (2-man canoe) searching in the darkness for a lost paddle; one of the paddlers had laid it down for a moment, and then it was gone, swallowed by the river. Of course it was a black paddle of the $350 variety. I helped them look for a few minutes, but as far as I know, they never found it. I rounded a few corners and came across another experienced C2 crew that had stopped for a break. Their light setup was incredible, and I waited for them so we could “share lights”.

Being TWS veterans, they had a lot of useful tips, though they seemed impressed at my maneuverability and ability to choose a good line in the dark. We talked as we paddled together, and I was a little bit surprised when they brought up ethics, specifically with regard to the TWS. As they gave examples of ways that teams can cheat in the TWS, I began to see that many teams see the TWS as a game of “who can cheat most effectively and get away with it". They brought up a “moral dilemma”. There was a bank up ahead, and by dragging our boats for about 50 yards, we could save over a river-mile worth of paddling. I didn't really care one way or the other; I was more concerned about not losing the awesome light source. So we hopped out, dragged across, and continued down the river. I'm glad that I followed them; I would have gotten smashed on the “Son of Ottine” rapids had I not been with them. Unfortunately, at Ottine Dam, my portage took so long that they left long before I made it across. This dam portage requires dragging your boat up a 30 foot hill, then along a dirt trail for what seems like 150 yards, and then down another hill. I was exhausted, and with no help whatsoever, it must have taken me close to 20 minutes. 4 other crews passed me during this portage like it was nothing.

The 4th checkpoint is Palmetto Park at 60 miles. It took me forever to get my boat out of the water onto the idiotic low-water bridge that serves as the checkpoint. No one can help you, so they just stare at you like jackasses while you try to get your footing and lift your loaded kayak out of the water, all while fighting a current that tries to turn your boat sideways and sweep you under the bridge. I set up my ultralight backpacker's hammock between a couple of trees, and I overslept when my mom couldn't find me to wake me up the next morning.


about to leave from Palmetto. That concrete structure is part of the bridge.

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At mile 81, the San Marcos River dumps into the Guadalupe River, and that's where things start to really get nasty. I'm not talking about difficulty; I'm talking about disgusting beyond belief. (Some people said this could have been due to flooding the previous week. Others call it the “Safari Stench”, something you just have to get used to.) I started to notice the smell around Gonzales (checkpoint 5; mile 85). It smelled like - maybe I had accidentally spilled some urine out of my piss cup. Embarassing, sure, but all I needed to do was rinse out the cockpit with river water – no problem. Except that only made it worse. In fact, anything that came in contact with the water started to smell.

As I came to the Gonzales Gravel Bar, I learned of a team that had continued past Palmetto the previous night, took a wrong, and paddled up the Guadalupe River for almost 5 hours. When they finally reached the checkpoint, they dropped out of the race; apparently they didn't have enough food left over for the rest of the race and were exhausted from the wasted effort.

It's almost 38 miles to the next checkpoint (Hochheim; checkpoint 6; 123 miles) – 38 miles without public access or opportunities for extra water. By this point, everyone is so spread out that it's possible to paddle for hours without seeing another boat. It can drive you crazy if you aren't used to paddling solo. For me, this section was relatively easy, though it took a couple of hours longer than I anticipated. One team was caught cheating in this section and disqualified; they had received extra food from their team captain. All food items have to be listed on the check-in inventory, and an empty wrapper for an unlisted item had been found by race officials during a random inspection.

I should have stopped at Hochheim for the night, but my mom assured me I could make it to Cheapside (checkpoint 7; 145 miles) without any trouble – only 22 miles, right? I also had to consider that if I stayed at Hochheim, I'd reach the mandatory dam portage a mile past Cheapside during the heat of the day. It was a difficult decision, but I decided to press on through the night.

I found this to be one of the most frustrating sections of the entire race. I expected to finish this section in about 4.5 hours, but it ended up taking me all night. Once you reach the point where you're thinking “I should have been there by now”, you hear cars passing by on what you assume to be the checkpoint/bridge, and then find that there's no bridge around the next bend in the river, or even the next 10 bends in the river, it's a HUGE letdown.

As I was cussing my way down the river, I rounded a corner and found a very disoriented C1 paddler. He had gotten turned around in an eddy, lost his balance, and flipped his boat. He had gotten back in his boat but was unsure of which way to go. I know what you're thinking... “That's easy, follow the flow of the water!” Along the entire Guadalupe River, you're faced with these massive eddies like you wouldn't believe. As you round a bend, if you don't line it up just right, the eddy will turn you sideways and try to knock you into the inside shore, or else you'll be paddling AGAINST the current as you're going downriver. Often, for a section of river that's maybe 50 yards wide, you have to be within a narrow “stream” 5 yards wide to be going with the current. And if you fall out of the stream for just an instant, the eddy catches you and turns you sideways. You're fighting the river the whole way just to stay in the current and not get flipped the wrong way. (This is the one big advantage of having a rudder. Even though I was able to turn on a dime, my momentum was lost every time I hit an eddy and had to reorient myself.) Anyway... “Thank God someone finally came! I wasn't sure which way to go!” He started following me downriver, but as we hit one eddy after another, each trying to push us back upstream, he lost confidence that I knew where I was going; he turned around and started paddling back upriver! (This is probably the same reason an experienced C2 crew could paddle up the Guadalupe River for 5 hours and not realize it.)


There's my 5000 pound boat. I didn't even bother moving it out of the way.

I reached the checkpoint around 7:00 a.m. on Monday, and I stopped for just an hour. There weren't any suitably-spaced trees to hang my hammock, so slept on the ground laying on top of it. It turns out I picked a bad spot for a bed – on top of a small ant hill. I was so out of it that I fell asleep anyway. Luckily they didn't bother me too much.


sleeping on an ant hill. water bladder = pillow.


my mom's van, completely packed. Notice the cart used to bring water long distances to hand-off sites.


My water shoes turned out to be a massive point of failure. The vast majority of portages involved slogging through clay or muck, and the tiny velcro heel straps gave way after a single step. So basically I ended up going barefoot for most of the race.

By the end of the second day, I started to get blisters on my heels from rubbing against the kayak. Talking with some of the other racers and team captains at the checkpoint, I learned that many racers use duct tape to bandage their wounds since it's the only kind of tape able to withstand the TWS's abuses. Here, I've wrapped my heels in duct tape.

Speaking of which... On the first day, an experienced solo canoeist saw me portaging barefoot and warned me that he had gone barefoot during a TWS in the past; he hadn't washed the gunk from beneath his toenails after each portage, and all of his toenails got infected and fell off after the race. Although I rinsed my feet off after each and every portage, I still ended up with 4 destroyed toenails.

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back to the grind. As I mentioned, I only stopped here to sleep for an hour. According to the course description, Cuero Dam was just a mile away, and I wanted to get through the sure-to-be-brutal mandatory portage before the heat of the day. Shortly after leaving Cheapside, I paddled without any difficulty through a mass of concrete & metal and past what appeared to be an abandoned power station. Surely this couldn't be the dam... Where the hell was the portage? Where was the dam? Why wasn't the river backed up? Where was the sign and flashing beacon indicating where to portage? You couldn't believe how pissed off I was; I spent the previous night on the river and slept for only an hour just so I could avoid portaging during the heat of the day... And here I come to find that THE DAM HAD BEEN COMPLETELY DESTROYED? There IS no mandatory portage? The lazy-ass webmaster didn't update the course description with this hugely significant bit of information? What the hell were they thinking?

This, it turns out, is another TWS “theme” - inadequate information. If you've ever taken part in (and especially if you've completed) the TWS, then you know from first-hand experience everything you NEED to know about the race. The website then becomes more like a guide, though you know from experience that “This is wrong... This is wrong... This is totally wrong...” If you're new to the race? “Fuck you, n00b! Learn to TWS.” Sure, racers are usually willing to help each other out, but this issue runs deeper than that. It seems like the race organizers are setting new participants up to fail. And it's not even that they leave out important info... The info that they give you is 100% wrong in some cases. As a new participant, you SHOULDN'T have any reason to question that the official race info is wrong; this is why it's inexcusable.


anyway, back to the river...

The section to Cuero (checkpoint 6, 160 miles) was a breeze. I pressed on, intending to reach Victoria City Park (checkpoint 7, 200 miles) that evening. There are two bridges between Cuero and VCP, and after I passed the second one without incident, it started to get dark. I caught a second wind and started hauling ass downriver, hoping to make it as far as I could before having to rely once again on my Maglite. It was around this time that I hit the flood waters. The river was up over its banks, the flow was incredible, and the eddies were monstrous. I was flying downriver in the dark, navigating by gaps in the treeline, and eventually shot past a 4-lane divided highway bridge that shouldn't have been there. It was 13 miles from the previous bridge to the checkpoint. Had I really shot past the checkpoint on accident and made it to the NEXT bridge, another 9 miles further down the river? “Surely not... Is it possible I made it this far so quickly? I'll be disqualified if I miss the checkpoint, and it's at least 18 miles to the next one. I don't have enough water to make it that far... I've got to make it back up to the checkpoint, 3 hours of hard paddling if I'm lucky...” I had come too far to get disqualified for some bullshit reason like the checkpoint not being well-lit; how else could I have shot past it? Thus I turned around and paddled as hard as I could back upriver against the flood water that was flowing almost as fast as I could paddle. When I say as hard as I could, I mean just that, because even slowing for an instant would have caused me to get carried backwards downriver with the torrent. I rode up the eddies as I came to them, then across and up the ridiculous currents where I had no choice. I was exhausted even before I had gone an hour, and just as I was thinking about returning to the bridge, climbing up, and tapping out of the race, a C1 rounded the corner coming downriver towards me.

I asked him how much further I needed to go back upriver to the checkpoint I had missed. He checked his GPS; the checkpoint was 3 miles PAST the bridge-that-shouldn't-have-been-there. Again, are you kidding me? A 4-lane divided highway that they just “forgot” to add to the course description? They have every tiny little county road bridge listed, and they leave out THIS one? I was furious and exhausted, but I followed the C1, dragging ass downriver to the Victoria checkpoint, and crashed for the night.

While I would have otherwise felt great the next morning, that whole upriver episode beat the shit out of me, and I was still exhausted the next day. I left the checkpoint the next morning shortly before a couple of first-time TWSers, John and Allen, and they easily caught up with me within an hour in their sea kayaks. I did my best to keep up with them, but I was too exhausted. I told them to go ahead; I couldn't keep up. Much to my surprise, they told me that I was going too fast for them; they were about to tell me to go ahead without them! So we slowed our pace substantially and got into a good rhythm – paddle hard for about 500 yards, then stop for 20 seconds or so to stretch/eat/drink/etc. We made good time and I slowly regained my energy over the course of the day. Their boats were slightly faster than mine, but by drafting behind them, I could easily keep up. We took turns in line, drafting behind one-another, stopping for frequent short breaks, and we continued in this manner for most of the rest of the race.

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I thought the river smelled bad at Gonzales. If only I'd known what was in store for me... At Victoria, the stagnated river was polluted beyond belief. Imagine the most disgusting river you've ever seen, then dump in the wastewater from a town of 60,000 people, and on top of that include the effluent from a plastics manufacturing facility. Sure, it's the “World's Toughest Canoe Race”, but that's not the point. It's kind of like the show Fear Factor, being disgusting just for the sake of being disgusting. Who in the history of this race thought that paddling this section of the river was a good idea? It doesn't get any better until you finally reach the Gulf, and even then, it still reeks.

I had planned to get water at the US-59 Bypass (mile 209). As I pulled up to the “landing”, a clay bank littered with foul-smelling discarded fish heads, a black lady who was fishing in the disgusting river asked if I was Andrew. I was surprised, but “yes” I said; my mom must have had a message for me? Apparently my mom was going to meet me at the next bridge. I checked my notes... There is no “next bridge”, just the next checkpoint, another 18 miles away. Surely she couldn't have screwed up this badly... She knew I wasn't carrying much water, only enough to get me to THIS bridge. Anyway, John and Allen's team captains were also running late, so we waited for a little while. When they arrived, I told them that my TC was nowhere to be found. Luckily, they had water to spare and were happy to share; they ended up giving me about 8 bottles to hold me over to the next checkpoint. I couldn't thank them enough. “YOU NO CAN HAZ WATERZ FROM ANY1 BUT UR TEAM CAPTAINZ!” The rules be damned, I'm finishing this race...

So, what happened? My mom knew to meet me at the US-59 Bypass as per the course description. Surprise! Surprise! The highway had been renamed. The OTHER highway is now considered to be the "bypass". She thought it was about 8 miles from this bridge to the “next bridge”, i.e. to the Bypass. Instead of meeting me at both bridges, she would meet me at ONLY the US-59 Bypass. Of course, when she figured out the description was wrong, she was horrified to realize she had told me (via the lady) to continue through to the next checkpoint without nearly enough water and with absolutely no possibility for another water hand-off. When we all met up at the next checkpoint, she found out what had happened from the other TCs. She almost blew it when, right in front of the checkpoint officials, she thanked the TCs for giving me water. (Maybe the officials thought that the TCs gave water to HER, and then SHE gave it to ME, which is legal.)

But before we made it to the checkpoint...

We started to see lots of alligator gar floating near the surface of the water. Out of the blue, a gar bit John on his elbow. If you know anything about alligator gar, this really is extraordinary. It didn't even draw blood, but it scratched him up visibly. John had horrible luck dealing with the wildlife. More on that later.

As we approached Invista (checkpoint 10; 227 miles) we became increasingly confused. First, we passed the plant. Then we passed the completely overgrown “swinging bridge” which, according to the course description, was supposed to be the checkpoint. We started calling out and whistling; was nobody there? We continued down the river and eventually passed a random boat ramp and port-a-pot. Surely this was the checkpoint! Why was there nobody here? We continued, complaining about how horrible the course description had been on all counts, and we eventually reached the nondescript checkpoint.


securing my boat at this shithole of a checkpoint, a destroyed clay river bank. Allen on the right.

We had reached the checkpoint around 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, and we were hoping to reach the Salt Water Barrier (checkpoint 11; 244 miles) around dark. We were told by checkpoint officials that there were 3 log jams, one of which was just past the power lines. We passed the railroad crossing (mile 234) without any trouble, but then we encountered TWO marked pipeline crossings; there was supposed to be ONE pipeline crossing at mile 236. This was problematic because one mile past "the" pipeline crossing is the cut to Alligator Lake, a dreadful place where TWSers usually get lost for hours. We wanted to avoid this cut at all costs; only we now had no idea how far away we were from the cut.

We portaged around a huge log jam followed by a smaller one. Having to portage up and down steep clay banks, we began steadying each others' boats, helping to collectively lift the boats out of the water, hauling the boats overland, and then lowering them back into the water. DISQUALIFYTATION! Whatever... After the second log jam, we came to a fork in the river. Checkpoint officials had told us that the cut “looks like the river” and that the river goes right. However, the current was coming in from the right. There were no marked creek confluences in this area, so this had to be the main river channel, perhaps flowing left due to the tide's effect on the connected bodies of water. We discussed our options and began paddling against the light current, which, as we progressed, became more and more powerful. “It's a tidal effect.”

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Night was falling, and we continued, eventually reaching a T intersection. The current flowed in from the right and from there flowed both back and left. This was unexpected; we checked our maps... Having discussed our options, we decided to go against the tide; we took a right. It was dark by the time we reached a small impassable cut through the trees. Water was flowing through at an incredible rate. We went back and took a left. This route just didn't "feel" right, so we went back to the T. Then we went back to the fork. Then back to the T. Finally, we returned to the impassable gap and waited for the tides to change. High tide was supposed to be at 11:00 p.m., and we just sat there in our boats trying to stay awake. We sat there from 10:00 p.m. until midnight, and absolutely nothing had changed. We checked the maps over and over again. “He said the cut looks like the river.” We waited for the current to stall. “Maybe it's still filling Alligator Lake?” It didn't slow the slightest bit.

We were all sleep-deprived and completely exhausted; it took us a while to come to the only logical conclusion: This was flood-water dumping into the river. So basically, we had no idea where we were going. John and Allen were debating just ditching their boats and hiking out to the nearest road. My one real contribution to them was talking them out of it. We went back to the fork, and I convinced them that we should take the left fork, the “cut”. If it was in fact the cut, the wrong way, we'd hit the Lake and at least be able to rule it out, then come back and try to find the right way. We began paddling timidly into the “cut”, scanning the banks for openings or any clues to whether we were going the right way. We were going so slowly... We had to pick up the pace, or we'd risk being disqualified by the checkpoint cutoff time. So we paddled faster than we had been all day, shooting down the middle of the cut, following it wherever it happened to go. We were relieved when, after what seemed like an eternity, we finally reached the fabled power lines. (We had already decided that the official meant “pipelines” instead of “power lines”.) Finally, we knew we were back on the right track.

The third portage, as described, was shortly after the power lines. We couldn't tell where other boats had portaged, so we went on the side that seemed like the shorter portage: the left side. In hindsight, this was the wrong choice. I was the first one up, and I could see there was poison ivy everywhere. We would attempt to avoid it; no problem... We lifted up all of the boats and stopped for a moment to rest. John happened to be standing on top of a fire ant hill, and they tore him to pieces. We didn't really have any choice but to walk through and drag our boats over the poison ivy. I had brought some Dawn dish detergent with me for just such an occasion. Once back in the water, I washed my legs off with soap, and I didn't get a single spot or rash anywhere on my legs. John and Allen declined my offer to let them use the soap; I'm not sure if they fared so well.

We never saw the alleged “cut” to Alligator Lake, and we followed the obvious river channel all the way to the Salt Water Barrier. We arrived about 5 hours later than we planned. We explained to everyone at the checkpoint that we literally sat in our boats for 2 hours, waiting for the flood waters to subside and thinking it was the tide. I was laughing so hard I was crying.

We didn't stay at the Barrier for long. We continued slowly, exhausted from not having slept in almost 24 hours. We reached the Tivoli bridge (247 miles) around dawn and dragged ass to San Antonio Bay (254 miles). These last 7 miles seemed to take forever.

The Bay was nothing like I expected. With the tides falling, the constricted mouth of the bay behaves almost like a tidal race. A huge amount of water was being pulled out to sea, trying to pull us out into the Gulf. Simultaneously, relentless wind waves hammered us from the southeast. We had hoped to cross the bay before the wind picked up in the morning, but so much for that idea.

There was absolutely no way to draft each other in the bay since we were all getting thrown around by waves, so we split up. I headed straight to “the point”, while they headed diagonally across the bay. I was closing my eyes and falling asleep momentarily while paddling; I kept getting jarred awake by my paddle slipping in the waves. I had to paddle hard to make any sort of progress against the waves and headwind, and I reached the point about an hour after leaving the river. While there, I stopped for a snack and encountered a TWS rescue motor boat. The officials asked if I'd seen so-and-so from a boat that had washed up. No; sorry. They went off to keep looking.

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Once rested, I started paddling diagonally across the bay to the mouth of the barge canal. The tide was more powerful than I anticipated, carrying me out faster than I could paddle across. Instead of paddling into the wind and through the waves, I was now paddling almost perpendicular to the wind/waves. With each and every wave, I had to edge/turn to the right to avoid getting flipped, then edge/turn back to the left for a quick stroke or two before the next wave.

I noticed that there was a C1 bobbing around to my left with its paddler swimming; I tried to make my way over but the tide carried me past him. John or Allen (can't remember) managed to reach him; the paddler was trying to find a shallow area where he could hop back into his boat. I don't know if he managed to finish within the 100 hour timelimit.

Having reached the barge canal, there was really nowhere to go but perpendicular to the waves. Thus, I tacked all the way to Seadrift. My mom said I looked like Lawrence of Arabia in my cap w/ neck flap.









From what I was told when I reached the finish, most teams dragged their boats, at least along the sea wall, and some all the way around the bay. Some teams took as long as 10 hours to make it from the river to the finish. All 3 of us rode in to the finish. Aside from the first 16 miles, this was the best part of the trip. It was a blast.


mile 260. made it.


I was one of the last finishers, coming in at approximately 96 hours, dangerously close to the race's 100 hour time limit.


the fabled TWS patch.


me and TC. Thanks, mom!


Allen, me, and John.

Epilogue:

While washing my boat and loading it onto the van after the race, my mom and I both rubbed against the poison ivy residue on the bottom of my boat. We both had major breakouts as a result.
Most of the clothing that I wore, in fact everything that couldn't be bleached, was discarded.
Despite having survived the TWS, my paddle got warped by the summer heat in Oklahoma (inside my car) and had to be replaced.

Through sponsorships for their TWS adventure, John and Allen raised $10,000 to start a scholarship fund for the Texas Transit Association.
You can learn more about their fundraising effort on [ Facebook ].

As of now, 3 months after the race, the results still haven't been posted and none of the incorrect information has been updated.

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Good read. Sounds like a blast.

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